We had a nice visit with Dr. Mazgani yesterday. Jenny asked her about having a drain tube put in as a 'fixture'. She said that would not be a good idea at this point. It is too immobilizing, and not appropriate for Jenny because it would restrict her from activities that she plans to do. She said if she needed to be drained every 3 or 4 days then it would be an idea.
She would like to go for a swim now and again, do a bit of gardening - basically whatever her limited energy will allow her to do.
Jenny asked for some bloodwork to be done; namely, her white blood cell count and her hemoglobin. These results should be ready soon.
Interesting thing came up there. Dr. Mazgani said that she is going away sometime in May, until mid June, so would be unable to see Jenny at that time. She was referring her to Dr. Smith for these routine visits, but Dr. Smith is still away with a complicated knee problem. We said as long as we don't get Dr. Michels we are fine. And we would be happy with Dr. McLean.
Well - there are different types of doctors at the cancer clinic. First, there are the specialty doctors like Dr, McMurtrie and Mr. Mazgani, Then, there are medical oncologists who are experts in the diffferent chemos etc. Then there are the doctors like Dr. Smith, who is a GP (in her first life she had her own practice for 25 years).
They do follow up visits with people when they are on chemo (she was Jenny's doctor through both rounds of chemo), and routine follow ups like Jenny is having now.
So since she knows we don't want Dr. Michels, and Dr. Smith is off, that leaves few on the "gyny" team. Then she says, "we do have a new doctor here now who is (whatever they call the Dr. Smiths of the team). Her name is Taryl Felhaber.
Poor Dr. Mazgani was standing between us. Jenny was sitting on the edge of the examining table, and I was on a chair. Both of us nearly fell off our respective perches. In both of us, there was an immediate visceral reaction and we spouted - and spouted and spouted. Dr. Mazgani's head was as if on a swivel.
The punch line here? Taryl Felhaber was Jenny's GP when she came down with cancer. Jenny did not need to have advanced cancer at the time of diagnosis. When she was diagnosed, Dr. McMurtrie expalined that this is a fast growning type of cancer, and that it would only be up to about 6 months old.
In February, 2008, Jenny had ALL the symptoms, including pain. She went to Taryl, and was told to take Ovol - an over the counter gas product!! I was incredulous when she came home and told me this. She had had these symptoms for about 2 weeks at this point.
The pain moved around for the next few months, it got hard for Jenny to bend down etc etc. Sometimes the symptoms worsened, sometimes they got better.
In July, they got worse, and Jenny went for a physical. In fact, she had full blown symptoms. This time Taryl told her to take probiotics! If I was incredulous months earlier, this one took the cake!
Within about a week, Jenny was in the hospital diagnosed with advanced peritoneal cancer. Felbaber did not MISS the diagnosis, she did not even do ONE thing to find out what it was. And - she is a doctor. She knows the symptom- or at least she should - they are identical to ovarian cancer.
So you can imagine us when we heard she is at the cancer clinic. After awhile as we started to calm down, Jenny did point out that at least she is not somewhere where she is diagnosing people anymore. Or should I say "not NOT diagnosing". Maybe she can do less damage there.
So that's the story of our trip to the doctor yesterday. Jenny is feeling a bit 'off' this morning, so we will see where the day takes us.
